The Lotus in the Frame

Selena had never planned to sell the black Lotus card tucked in the velvet sleeve at the back of her binder. It was a Beta-era relic from her first days playing the game she loved, a birthday gift from her mother on the year she learned how to shuffle cards with shaking hands and hope in her chest. After her mother died, the card became more than rare cardboard and ink. It became proof that love could outlast a life.

Her boyfriend, Adrian, knew that. Or she had thought he did.

One evening she came home to find the sleeve empty.

At first she searched the apartment in silence, then with growing panic, pulling open drawers, checking under couch cushions, emptying bags. When Adrian finally admitted he had sold it, he said it casually, as if he had pawned a lamp or a broken watch. He refused to say where.

Selena felt the world tilt under her feet. The card was worth a small fortune, yes, but that was not the wound. It was the last gift her mother had given her, the last thing she could hold and touch.

She called the police with trembling hands and brought the card’s documentation on her laptop. The officer at the desk frowned at the valuation, then looked again, then nodded and wrote everything down. Selena filed a stolen-property report. That same night she phoned her renter’s insurance and, through tears and disbelief, learned she might be covered.

The next morning she found the shop.

There was arguing at the counter, voices rising as she explained what had happened and showed proof. The owner hesitated until Selena told him she would call the police and have stolen property traced and seized. The room went still.

In the end, they returned the card.

She held the sleeve to her chest as if it might vanish again.

By the time she got home, Adrian’s things were packed into boxes and stacked outside the door. She had already changed the locks. She never spoke to him again. Later, his mother came to collect the boxes.

Selena sat alone that night with the Lotus in her hands, crying not because the damage had been undone, but because for one terrible day she had thought she had lost her mother twice.